Posted on 07/29/2018 4:39:26 PM PDT by Enterprise
Forget Blacks. GOP should go after Asian-Americans. GOP will remain a force in national politics even if Whites’ percentage of American Population continued decline with increasing Asian-American support. They tend to be industrious small business owners so they will be a natural fit for GOP. Just my two cents.
Well said.
Another thing which everyone seems to know but is not true is that Blacks were not able to vote in the South. I suspect that was true of some places but it was not at all the truth where I lived.
NW Florida is probably the most conservative area in the nation. My Grandfather was a politician and he always carried the Black Precincts. I always wondered how Granddaddy managed it but he did.
I’m with you. No question about it.
But they didn’t go to FDR until 1936. Hoover would’ve had trouble getting such laws through the 1929-30 Congress, and after the midterms (which initially had the GOP with a narrow majority, until a rash of Republican deaths including that of Speaker Longworth) resulted in the Dems taking control, utterly impossible.
There’s a problem with your argument — the Southern states had viable Whig parties (except for SC) before the Civil War. In my state of TN, the Whigs were in the majority for a decent period. They effectively were formed in opposition to President Jackson. They could’ve continued (albeit only in the South) after the Civil War (a decade after the party ceased to be elsewhere), but were effectively absorbed into the Democrats since the GOP was deemed too radical (and anti-Southern) for them to enter into and have any influence. All the ideological battles from left to right were had within the Democrats in the South.
Well, they should go after ALL groups that desire economic advancement. The GOP should still set a goal of getting 25-33% of Blacks back into the party, as it would assure in many states that the Democrats would cease to be competitive statewide. The more Blacks holding office under the GOP label, the easier it will be to break the stranglehold the Dems have.
BS. It was Roosevelt Washington Elementary School.
Some were, but this was not the norm. For example, Blacks in Memphis were “permitted” to vote in the Jim Crow Era, so long as they backed the Democrat Crump Machine from the 1910s/20s-50s, which controlled TN politics statewide. They voted for whom they were told to vote. If they deviated from the script, the votes would be yanked. Even at that, they (Dems) still didn’t allow them even one state legislator from Reconstruction until the 1960s.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
The United States is a Republic.
AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
QUOTATION: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
I once read a book about “Boss Crump”. He was a rare bird in that he was a benevolent dictator or “Boss”.
During his time, Memphis had excellent schools, beautiful parks and low crime. What crime there was was pretty much in the Black areas. He allowed them to do about what they wanted as long as it was limited to their neighborhoods.
Memphis in his time was a far, far better place to live than now.
they had viable Whig parties but the Jeffersonian Democrats were utterly dominant.
Read the Confederate constitution some time. They gave the president a line item veto, forbade riders on bills to prevent pork barrel spending, required a balanced budget, required the central bureaucrats to answer to individual state legislatures, built in more explicit and stronger protections of the rights of states, required a supermajority to pass tax increases, etc etc. It would be an absolute dream constitution for Libertarians and Conservatives today in all those respects.
What this points to is how consistent Southerners have been in their political philosophy for over 200 years. If you read some of the letters people wrote back then or some of the newspaper editorials, you’ll be amazed how the views on many of these issues have not changed.
The Democrats today are the exact opposite on practically every single issue.
Memphis was still majority White in his time. Many of the cities were. It was only when Whites started looking for newer housing post-WW2 up until around 1960 when the Black populations started to tick upwards (and the large outflux from the southern rural areas) and eclipsed the White majorities by 1970 when the proverbial dam broke loose (and the ghastly leftist pols and policies that destroyed said cities).
As a kid I had no idea it was supposed to be an inner city ghetto school.
It just seemed overall a terrible place to be.
The Whigs did have majorities at certain points in FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, TN & VA, so the Jeffersonians/Jacksonians weren’t without a challenge. John C. Calhoun passed on leading SC Nullifiers into the Whigs (although his fellow Senator William C. Preston did) and returned to the Dem fold.
Of course, there wasn’t a gargantuan gulf ideologically between the two groups as we have today between the present parties. The Dems had their anti-slave factions and the Whigs had their pro-slave “Cotton” faction.
But in those days, the folks that could vote all had proverbial skin in the game and making a mistake could cost them everything. Except to the truly radical, it was unimaginable for them to saddle the nation with such debt and spending, even in the case of emergencies.
However, in the post-Civil War period, you did start to have leftist economics rearing their ugly head under the so-called populist movement, the free-Silverites and the like, and they did include Southerners. Many Southern Democrats were behind the push for bigger government, especially in toppling the Conservative Bourbons (the fiscally responsible Dems). All 4 of the post-Civil War Dem Southern Presidents (Wilson (I count him as Southern despite being elected out of NJ), LBJ, Carter, Clinton) have all been left-wingers.
bump
Thanks. I noticed that, and I thought that seemed somewhat high.
Speaking for my fellow Southerners....we don’t count Wilson. He was a New Jerseyite as far as we’re concerned. Yes we know he was born and raised in Virginia but he left and his views were much more in line with New Jersey where he lived for many years and worked and first was elected to political office.
LBJ, Carter and Clinton were all Democrats from the 60s on. By that time the party had drifted way to the Left. LBJ implemented really big expensive social programs and post LBJ, the more hawkish wing of the Democratic Party was completely destroyed. There was absolutely nothing left that would appeal to Southerners. Frankly, I’m surprised it took until 1992 for the South to finally send more Republicans to Congress. Old habits are hard to break I guess.
Well, I’m one as well, and I do count Wilson as one. He was born right there in Staunton, Virginia, his parents were Confederates, he saw Gen. Lee face-to-face, he was raised in the South. He didn’t leave the South for the North until he was about 27. He could just have easily remained in academia in the South as opposed to New Jersey with the same political outlook.
New Jersey was a Republican state at the time he won the Governorship in 1910, only that President Taft was contending with a midterm anti-GOP backlash, which Wilson benefitted from (it didn’t last long, even as he was winning the Presidency for the second time in 1916, NJ’s Governorship went back to the GOP).
It’s curious to note that in some areas of the South in the 1920s, especially with the die-off of the Civil War veterans and first generation of youngsters brought up to loathe the Republican Party, the party started to become viable (which blows away the fictitious “Southern Strategy” crap of Nixon’s). My state of TN voted for Warren Harding in 1920, 5 out of the 10 Congressional seats went Republican and we elected a Republican Governor. Republicans were making breakthroughs in parts of the South throughout the 1920s, including winning or coming close to in the 1928 elections (although part of that had to do with the Dem candidate being Catholic, but it also had to do with perceptions of being a big city liberal, which didn’t play well in the South).
Had the Depression not occurred as it did in 1929, it’s likely the South would’ve continued to move towards the GOP to vote more like the rest of the nation. It was only because of the Depression that GOP gains were curtailed for another 20+ years or so.
You’re right about old habits (especially voting) tending to die hard. The urban areas were the first in the South to move to the GOP in the ‘50s, then the suburbs by the ‘70s, with the rural areas generally the last (which, by that time, the urban areas with changing demographics moved back to the Democrats). The Democrats held on to our (TN) state legislature via gerrymandering exclusively on the strength of the rural areas. Once the GOP broke the lock, the rural areas moved hard to the GOP. Aside from a few seats here and there, virtually every rural district that is White is now Republican.
He must mean $500 per month in *today’s* dollars.
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